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July 14, 2011

Time Change Adaptations, and a Big Girl Track Session

Most of my runs have been on stuff like this...

There is an overly simplistic model for how long it takes to fully adapt to a time change: one day for every one hour of time difference. I have a general distrust for anything that prescriptive, especially when it tells me something I don’t want to hear. It supposedly takes “12 weeks to get in shape,” and “six weeks to make adaptations in the weight room” and “six seconds for every pound of body fat you lose, per mile of your race.” I find most of those things totally inaccurate, so when people are telling it would take NINE days to adjust to Font Romeu, France?! Hells to the no.

...at this pace.

I’m only training up here for 20 days, and you’re telling me 9 of those are pretty pointless? Damn. I need every day I can get! In past years, when I did something more sensible like go to a sea-level training base in Europe, it would take me three days max to adjust, and by day four I’d be tearing up some 1k repeats on the track. But I’ve already been convinced that Font Romeu works wonders for endurance athletes, with Paula Radcliffe training here for 15 years and a bunch of other people who set PB’s in events ranging from 800-marathon (including OTC athletes Nick Symmonds, Jemma Simpson, Chris Thompson, Ben Bruce, and Sally Kipyego last summer). The list of success stories in long, so train patiently for the past eight days I have done.

Rinker, AKA Rinkles, is all business.

At long last, I get the call from Rowlando to do 8 x 1k progressing on the track on Tuesday morning: day nine of altitude. He wouldn’t be in town until the evening, so it was me and Rinker (Rinkles) and a breezy 6000 foot track. I had no specific times to hit, (the workout being effort based,) so I was pretty excited about it. Failure is impossible in those kind of workouts if you set realistic expectations and don’t think too hard.

Lindsay Allen back in the day

As Bridget and I strolled down to the track, a feeling of purpose came over us, and our girly chit chat was replaced with quiet focus. At the track were several little pocket groups at various stages of warmup: Alberto Salazar talking over the session details with his athletes Lindsay Allen and Alvina Begay; a couple African athletes floating through a few final strides; Paula Radcliffe doing some active stretching while Gary tunes up his bike to pace her through her reps; a Russian woman I vaguely recognize talking over last minute workout details with her male training partner, as she strips down to her bun huggers and sports bra for the first rep.

What a gift to get to train in this kind of environment, I think to myself. Dr. Bob in Seattle would be all over the vibrational frequencies of this place.

I did my warmup, the usual stuff, and Rinkles went over to the start line to time me. We waited as Lindsey and Alvina sprinted by on some shorter reps with Alberto yelling splits, and then another moment as Gary led Paula through the finish line of something that looked quite hard. “Alright, keep it controlled for the first few, Fleshman,” he said. “The last four you can pick it up if you feel good.”

The first half of the workout was an absolute joy. My times were quicker, and they felt more relaxed, than I expected, and I recovered well after each one. On the fourth rep, Paula and Gary cruised up behind me, and when they didn’t go around me, I ended up subconsciously picking it up and running a little too fast. Whoops: four to go. Hopefully I didn’t blow it there.

Each of the last four 1k reps, I picked off a little bit of time. On rep 7 of 8, I was hurting pretty bad. The altitude was gaining on me, and the desired physiological effect of the workout was doing its job perfectly. The Russian woman was sprinting 300’s with her training partner, and they flew around me looking graceful and explosive. I felt the usual conflict: pain trying to talk you out of the work that needs to be done. I felt alone out there, and the task seemed great. This conflict, this moment, is where the choice is made that leads to breakthroughs. I walked the final 15 seconds of my recovery and thought of Paula, and all the tough workouts she has done alone. Any great pursuit requires the lonely exploration of one’s human limitations.

As the pain and fatigue began to grip in, I tried to embody the characteristics needed most in endurance racing: toleration of, and relaxation into, pain; being phased by nothing; disassociation with the physical outside world; directing the flow of energy within. I finished my last rep in 3:00, faster than all the others, hunched over with the pain of the effort, but smiling inside with satisfaction.

This might be the fastest comment ever (what? I don’t have a google reader problem! I can stop any time I want!)

Anyway, about running rules, I thought it was 2 sec/mile for every pound of fat! True fact! And don’t forget never to increase your mileage by more than 10% (per…week? month? average of 10% over a period of 6.75 months?) The “rules” are the running equivalent of urban myths.

Love your stories about training in Font Romeu, and it’s a wonderful image,all those great runners on the same track. Hard to imagine a better atmosphere for getting in racing shape. So inspiring.

Are you sure it’s really the altitude that’s the key to the training effect? Or is it the foie gras/steak/bacon salad combination that’s the real secret here :p (re: your twitter feed photos). No worries, a glass of red wine balances it all out!

I feel like I should be taking notes on your journal entries or something to apply to my own running. Fabulous, as always, and very eloquently articulated.

Not that my opinion actually matters on this subject as a recreational jogger, but I definitely think that the times when you push through your own preconceived barriers that you make the most gains mentally (and probably physically, too). And the mental part of racing is the hardest part, for me, at least, so I find I can draw upon times like that when I’m wanting to “just jog” a race.

For your first point, same basic idea as what you described in your 4 x 1 mile workout before Steamboat, eh?

As for the workout, coaches feel free to step in and comment on this one. Until then, I’ll provide my experiential take on it. Reps at that pace (VO2 pace) are the hardest kind of reps: the goal is to improve your speed at which you reach your maximum oxygen uptake. VO2 intervals the most crucial workout for a 5k athlete come racing season.

I’m sure there are many ways to implement these sessions, but traditionally for me these intervals are at 5k race pace, between 2 and 5 minutes in length, and with 2-3 minutes of recovery. Sometimes the recovery is less when you are really fit. 5-8 x 1k is a stock standard 5k workout all around the world.

So I’ll start out at a given speed, and for the first one or two, my heart rate doesn’t reach the 90-95% of max window until the last 400 or so, making only about a minute of the rep hard. But with each consecutive rep, you spend more and more of that rep at your VO2 max heart rate. By the last one, you are spending 900 out of 1000 meters at VO2 max, and it HURTS. That is the exact kind of pain you feel in a well run 5k race, and the only way to practice coping with that pain is to do VO2 max workouts like this. If you don’t practice it, you simply can’t tolerate the pain. Your body does what it is supposed to do and says “WHAT THE F%*# are you DOING? I’m stopping you now.”

I used to dread VO2 work, afraid of the pain that would come on the last few reps. But now that I know how effective they are, I covet them. If I had stopped at rep #4, I only would have practiced running with pain for 50% of the length of the interval, which isn’t that awesome. To reach ballar status, you really need to be able to tolerate that kind of pain for 75-90% of the length of the rep, which meant taking the # of reps up to 8, (or you could just take less recovery I guess).

The ironic thing is, VO2 max workouts, (on their own) don’t do shit. You have to have them as part of a bigger training program that includes lots of threshold running, more humane intervals, many many recovery days, and some sprints. If I ran VO2 max intervals every 3 days, I wouldn’t get any faster. But if I splatter them in now and then between periods of the other types of training, I see big improvements.

Cool. Thanks for the explanation. Ok, sorry, one more question. WTF is threshold running – is that the pace at which you can maximally process lactic acid? And, if so, is continuing to run at said death pace work to increase the efficiency at which your body can handle lactic acid? Is that the same thing as a tempo runs? [There are too many terms in running which actually just mean “run faster” to me.] Anytime I feel all lactic-acidy, I think of my poor liver taking on the metabolic burden converting said lactic acid back into usable energy (the Cori cycle). I am such a nerd.

You’ve basically got the gist of it. Tempo runs are the main way to increase your threshold.
If you are safely within that threshold, you are still working aerobically.
Above your lactate threshold (or some say aerobic threshold, or use other terms) your body can no longer create enough ATP/energy to match the demands through aerobic means, so it starts using anaerobic energy producing pathways.
Once you go anaerobic, or “over the threshold”, lactic acid starts building up (its a bi-product of anaerobic training). In longer races, once you go anaerobic, you are pretty much effed…you better hope the finish line is nearby because you can’t tolerate lactic acid for very long. This is one reason it is such a good strategy in longer distance races to start conservatively and work your way into a pace, (like you did at Steamboat) rather than push the line from the beginning.
Large amounts of lactic acid build up make your arms feel numb, your legs go all heavy and wobbly, and eventually you will feel like puking. 800m and 1500 meter runners are masters of lactic acid buffering, which is why I bow down to them with humility. Speed skaters too, interestingly, since they are squatted down burning the hell out of their quads the entire time they are sprinting. As a science geek, you should wikipedia that shit. You’ll entertain yourself for hours.

Also can entertain myself for hours with this — “six seconds per pound of body fat you lose, per mile of your race.” So, for a marathon, if you lost 5 lbs of body fat alone you’d be 13 minutes faster? That seems like a lot of time. I’d have to see it to believe it. Or was that what I was missing?!? ha Not giving up dessert any time soon to test it, I don’t think.

Lauren, you are the coolest! Everytime I read your blog I smile because I love the way you show that running (even at the elite level) is under the umbrella of life, not the umbrella itself. Another thing that impresses me about you is that you take your craft seriously, as do most of us who train, but you don’t inflate running to the levels reserved for Cuban Missile crisis scenarios. Not showing my age here, because I’m young, but had Kennedy on the brain because I saw a picture of him in a magazine the other day. LOL

Sure, sure you are young. Who says “stay cool?” Admit it, you were JFK’s high school math teacher. This is a safe place.
For real though, thanks for the comment. With your life experience, I’m sure you could offer some great pointers for the younger generations, so I hope you’ll continue to comment in the future.

Okay, you got me – ha! ha! Actually I am still young, I’ll be 51 on August 10th. I truly do appreciate your approach because when I was in college and the military, my total focus was running. I planned everything, except my work schedule, around my workouts. I was pretty good in my earlier days: 4:15 mile; 14:55 5k; 24:42 5 miles; 31:03 10k; 1:11 half marathon. I started running when I was 19 and by the time I was 23 I was running these times. But alas the twin demons of overtraining and overtraining (ha ha) brought on injuries and burnout.

By the time I was 28 I’d begun law school and all serious training flew by the proverbial wayside. Over the years I ran occassionally, but not enough to see my waist line expand. In October of 2009 I went for my yearly physical and my weight had ballooned to 206 pounds. I’m 6’1 and during the height of racing days I was 153. I could not believe that from 1988 to 2009 I’d gained over 50 pounds. Disgusted I started running regulalrly again. By November of 2010 I was down to 174. I ran a 5k on Thanksgiving and finished in 21:38. Of course I was not happy, but my perspectives about running had changed; it was no longer life or death. Still, the competitive fire was lit and I went from running to training. By May of 2011 I was up to about 60 miles per week, with tempo’s, progression runs, etc. I ran a 5k and in late May and my time was 17:15. And my weight dropped to 160. Now I’m really psyched. I’m shooting for faster times and I believe that I can do it, but if I don’t, so be it!

But what does all of this mean, absolutely nothing and absolutely everything. I realize that I love running more than anything, but my wife and two children. My 11 year old daughter, by the way, is a budding cross country and track star. We often run together and that is more satisfying than any P.R. Okay, maybe not (ha! ha!) Seriously, this is what running is all about for me now. When I was younger, I never, ever placed running in an existenstial context. I trained and I raced because I loved it and I wanted to be fast. Period. I never saw a correlation between running and a holistic life. I compartmentalized running. But now I see differently and it’s because I now fit running into life that it is so much more enjoyable. And this is what it’s all about for me.

So again I appreciate you and your healthy outlook and not taking anything away from Molly Huddle, Angela Bizzari and the other qualifier, but if you’d had enough time to train as you would have felt comfortable with, only Molly would have been able to run with you and I think your finishing speed would been the difference. But waht makes you a champion, and I know you’ve heard this a million times since Nationals, is that you competed and you didn’t make excuses. This is something I teach my kids, man or woman up, handle your business and keep it moving.

Thanks Tony. Very well said, and a great story of athletic development. What strikes me most is that “athletic development” doesn’t necessarily coincide perfectly with peak performance. You can run quite fast when you are young and not be a very well developed athlete overall, with very little understanding of the big picture of running. My coach, Mark Rowland, puts a huge emphasis on trying to develop his athletes mentally, emotionally, and physically in parallel, and its incredible. Imagine how fast you could have run in your physical “prime” (or so they say) if you knew then what you know now? I wonder that myself even at 29. There is a certain knowledge and experience that you just can’t short cut…that is brought along most naturally with the passing of years on earth. When you are a young athlete, you rarely think that a better global understanding of life can help your running. Most young people instead focus all their energy on the minutia, limiting their experiential gains to only the arena of sport: “what are the key workouts; how can I speed recovery; what stretches should I do?”
Some of the biggest leaps I’ve made in sport have been due to discoveries outside of running: how to better control my mind and stay relaxed under stress (Eastern Thought), getting a life partner and truly investing is something other than myself alone; watching the “Kill Bill” movies (1 and 2); realizing how important and fulfilling being in nature is for me; community involvement in a smaller town setting vs being lost in a big city…the list goes on, and all of these discoveries have enhanced my running performances one way or another.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.

Lauren, I couldn’t have said it better if I tried. I’ll never be able to match my physical peak, but I enjoy running a hell of a lot more than I did when my singular focus was getting faster. I can remember being a complete jerk back then (not in a nasty way), but cutting off the different arteries of life, hanging out, going to dinner, communing with people other than other time and training obsessed runners. Oh how I wish I could go back, but I can’t and that’s okay.

Lauren, I loved your description of going through pain as it resonates well with the physical pain felt both in running and during childbirth. Both are types of pain with a purpose that can lead to triumphant results.

Funny you say that Jenn. When I think about childbirth, and the pain it will bring, it makes me want to experience it in its full form if possible, at least once. I don’t know if that is because of my experiences with pain in running, or if its because I’m a massachist. I mean, if someone told me that I could run the same exact time in a 5k with far less pain by taking a drug, part of me would be REALLY ENTHUSIASTIC about that, but the other part of me would hesitate: is the feeling of triumph at the end as intense when it isn’t closely linked to the satisfaction of overcoming pain?

Lauren,I hope you remember me.Actually I’m sure you do.Your characterization of pain was right on.In the past I have coached and run with many youth running groups. I ran many miles with my daughter Barrie and it took some time for her to learn to embrace pain. Once she did very good things happened.Dealing with pain is a major requirement for all. From recreational to elite.I am so happy to follow your exploits via your web site. I wish you continued success From your very old friend. Barry Truex

Barry! Great to see your name and comments on here! I hope you and Barrie are well. I think that would be the most challenging part of coaching youth runners…knowing how much to push the pain threshold with them, and how to introduce that aspect of running in a way that is compelling and a cool challenge, rather than scary. It goes against human instinct for people, unless they’re uber-competitiveness trumps that.

Lauren, I’ve really enjoyed some of the reoccuring themes in your posts; positivity, being present to whatever a moment might be, being calm under pressure and being 100% of what you are today! Also keeping a good persepective on things and having fun: ) I can certainly see these ideas being helpful in my running, at the moment I’m working my way through an intensive summer class and finding myself drawing on some of the same concepts for inspiration! So THANK YOU, you’ve been really helpful! Have a great time in Europe and I look forward to following your progress!

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